Every year, TIME highlights inventions that are making the world better, smarter and even a bit more fun. (See last year’s list here.) To assemble our 2020 list, we solicited nominations both from our editors and correspondents around the world, and through an online application process. We then evaluated each contender on key factors, including originality, creativity, effectiveness, ambition and impact.
The result: 100 groundbreaking inventions—including a smarter beehive, a greener tube of toothpaste, and technology that could catalyze a COVID-19 vaccine—that are changing the way we live, work, play and think about what’s possible.
Photographs by Jessica Pettway for TIME
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